Review of Planes: Fire & Rescue (2014) by Liam C — 12 Aug 2014

So that's two movies released in 2014 that are sequels to movies that were released in 2013 that are both better than the original, the other being The Purge: Anarchy. Planes: Fire And Rescue is a significant improvement over the last movie and actually has some very welcome surprising moments, however, like Purge: Anarchy, you could argue that it didn't have to try very hard to outdo the first.

Very early on it became clear that somebody actually cared about what they were making because the poor characters and terrible puns were absent, all the very obvious stereotypes from the first movie are nowhere to be seen. The new group of characters were actually fun and had something to them and while there were not that many puns, when one or two did show up they were actually funny. There were also some other jokes in there for adults, nothing rude but I got quite a laugh out of the Howard the Truck joke. The production values were much higher as the movie looked 10 times better and the music was good too.

Given how safe the story of the first one was, I was surprised where this one went. Every few minutes something just seemed to go wrong, whether it be a building being destroyed or a character gets smashed up by some of the rubble that is dropping, something bad seemed to be happening quite often. Not to mention Blade's backstory which is quite tragic, it was like Skipper's backstory from the first, however in that one it was more of a surprise because it looked like that part in particular had some effort put into it as that movie on the whole was bland, anyway the fact that there is death in both is still a moment where you pay attention.

The voices do help, Ed Harris brings quite a lot to his character, it might not be the most original thing you've ever seen but his voice really does help with his authoritative tone. Wes Studi was a nice addition, just don't get Johnny Depp, Dane Cook was once again likeable as Dusty and everyone else does their part very well, with some of the old characters returning, but the good ones, the ones that don't get annoying.

Another thing the story did well was that it actually focussed on a plot point that remembered that what we are dealing with here are vehicles and that they can break down and have things go wrong. The movie doesn't just forget this plot point like the afraid of heights thing in the last movie until the last few minutes, it remembers what it established and has a good arc with it. I actually got invested in what was happening and wanted to see what happened next just because of how unexpected everything was.

I didn't go in prepared on hating it, I was expecting an improvement though, because that is what a good sequel is supposed to do, but I was not expecting anything like this and I got my improvement. It took a few chances, did something different and was actually fun to watch. That could come down to just being surprised it wasn't as bland as the first one and that could be why I like this one so much, perhaps that does play a factor into it. All I know is with the first one I just felt, that was an all right way to kill an afternoon with my family but with this one I actually felt like I watched something good and had a fun time, I wouldn't say no to watching it again at some point.